President Xi Jinping of China could bring the Russian invasion of Ukraine to a shuddering halt -- if he so wished it. Publicly (or even privately) declaring that the war in Ukraine was too destabilizing -- that world order had been upended too much by the unprovoked attack on Ukraine and that it was what time for Russia to withdraw -- would leave Putin no other choice. Putin depends on Chinese (and North Korean) backing to fuel his war in terms of logistics and technological material and -- critically -- legitimacy. He also relieves what would be global isolation by clinging to Chinese patronage. (And Russia sells huge amounts of discounted oil to Beijings.)
Obviously, Xi, now touring France, Hungary, and Serbia, is not primed to pull the rug out from under Putin. His objective on this trip is, instead, to try somehow to divide Europe from the United States by emphasizing what he will and will not do to improve economic transactional relations between his country and the nations of Europe that derive large portions of their export revenues from selling automobiles, industrial goods, and luxury products (perfume, cognac, jewelry) to China and Chinese consumers. He is content to use Putin's war as a sabre with which to try Washington and Brussels.
But it is nevertheless important to make clear that if Xi really wanted to establish his own good intentions and China's desires to be a major contributor to peace and harmony in our troubled world, he would do something to end hostilities in Ukraine, and take credit for doing so. Instead of China experiencing severe economic turmoil at home thanks to lax controls in the domestic real estate market, it could bring back internal growth by becoming a global peace maker -- a global influence for good and for lowering the tensions in today's world that are contributing so much to the perturbations and anxieties of the peoples and nations of the planet.
Xi could become a hero by lowering the torrid temperature of world affairs and world conflict. That would mean stopping Chinese bullying of the Philippines over forlorn outcroppings in the South China Sea. And calling off its similar conflict with Japan over islands that have long been Japanese, but are now claimed by China. It would mean relaxing a little over Taiwan -- not withdrawing China's claims but not fighting for them every day. And it would mean a major break with Putin.
None of that is likely to happen. Xi is not suddenly going to strive to become a world statesman instead of a world bully, alongside the bully that Putin enjoys being. But I emphasize here the fact that a sustainable peace in Ukraine is as much about Xi's intentions and ambitions as it is about Putin finally relenting his attempt to add Ukraine to his post-Soviet empire. Or being deposed or defeated.
Putin invaded Ukraine to realize his Czarist dreams of imperial restoration, and because he thought that the U.S. was asleep and weak. That the U.S. and Ukraine immediately resisted so well, and that Ukraine is now faltering thanks to Republican Congressional political opportunism, has only redoubled Putin's intent to show the world that he (and his Chinese partner) are invincible no matter what the West and NATO try to do to deny his dreams of conquest.
For all of these reasons, the ultimate security of the West and the entire free world -- even including those African and South American places that are attempting to remain "neutral"-- now depends in the short term on the courageous, ammunition- and air-power-limited resources of the embattled front-line soldiers of Ukraine. Thanks to Republican Congressional shenanigans, six-months' of weapon deliveries were delayed -- fatally. And that last word should be taken literally. Even now it is touch and go: the delayed munitions may not reach the Ukrainian front lines in time to hold off the Russian assault on Chasiv Yar, and the possible unzippering of the entire Ukrainian defensive line. The defenders cannot fight just with their hands and brains, and home-made drones.
This is what a distinguished war correspondent friend reported to me last week from the bloody front lines: "I’m deep in the Donbas forests. It’s a beautiful spring day, but the front is not so far from here, and creeping ever closer thanks to the morons in what’s left of the Republican Party. I’d like to drag them by their botoxed faces to this front and show them what they’ve done. Then I’d like to show them the cemeteries filled overflowing with Ukraine's brightest and best. Not for Ukraine the luxury of emptying their prisons of rapists and murderers for the meat-grinder that is the Donbas front now. I am fed up and furious. And terribly tired. If I could afford to, I would walk away...."
We are still as citizens everywhere engaged in a bitter slog of a struggle to uphold the promising future that the end of World War II and the conclusion of the Cold War, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, delivered to a hopeful humanity. We need President Biden and every like-minded leader for whom he stands to continue to stoke the fires of freedom in the West, and to try to cajole Xi and China to become profitable partners rather than anxious adversaries. As the report from the Donbas movingly suggests, time is not our friend. Nor are the kinds of partisan political maneuvering that still motivates Putin's defenders in Hungary and Serbia, and in China. Having a fifth column of Republicans doing much the same in Congress is hardly productive, either. Bring on the missiles, the F-16s, and shells that will make their way toward Russian lines.
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